Richard Baker - Final Gate

“I am afraid… that it is too late for that, Ilsevele. It is time

… to walk in Arvandor instead…”

Fflar’s eyes blurred with tears. He had seen too many warriors fall on too many battlefields to argue with Seiveril. “Ilyyela is waiting for you there, my friend.” He reached down and found Seiveril’s hand, and gripped it tightly. “There is nothing to fear. I know it.”

The dying elf found a smile. “I saw Myth Drannor before I died… I am content. Ilsevele… you must finish what I have started here. Starbrow… live the life you have been called back to. You have surpassed any failures… you carry in your heart.” He reached out and set Ilsevele’s hand in Fflar’s, and breathed one last time. “… Love…” he whispered, and his eyes closed forever.

“Father,” Ilsevele murmured. She lowered him to the palace steps and sobbed over his chest. “Father!”

Fflar simply bowed his head. No words came to him. He clasped Ilsevele’s hand in his and knelt in silence by Seiveril’s torn body. He knew he was soon to leave this world, Fflar thought. He knew, and he set out to right the wrongs he could before he was called home.

“Rest, my friend,” he finally whispered.

Ilsevele looked up at him, ignoring the tears that streaked her face. “Starbrow, the daemonfey,” she said. “They fled into the palace. Sarya must have another portal inside.”

“It would not surprise me,” Fflar grated. He picked up Keryvian and climbed to his feet. The broken gates of the castle waited for him. “We cannot let them escape again, Ilsevele.”

“Go, Starbrow!” she said. “I will finish the fight here.” She stood, bow in hand, and raised it above her head. “To me, warriors of Evermeet! To me!”

Sehanine, watch over her, Fflar silently prayed. He looked around and saw Jerreda Starcloak and two of her wood elves, who stood gazing at Seiveril with horror.

“Jerreda, follow me!” he said, and he turned and leaped up the stairs.

The wood elves tore their eyes away from the fallen leader of the Crusade and bounded after him. Together they dashed into Castle Cormanthor, blades bared.

Fflar could hear the sounds of battle echoing throughout the castle. He followed the first hallway he came to for thirty paces or so, and it opened out into a small chapel or shrine. The old symbols of the Seldarine had been removed, but a blank alcove behind the altar still shimmered with a thin gray mist.

“As I thought,” he said. “It’s a portal.”

Jerreda recognized it too. “What do we do?” the wood elf princess said. “The daemonfey might have gone anywhere.”

Fflar hesitated only a moment before deciding. “After them,” he growled. Then he ran up and hurled himself through the gray mists.

It did not take Araevin long at all to find a portal in Myth Drannor. The city was riddled with them. A brief search and a quick spell of portal mastery allowed him to locate a suitable gate and shift its destination to the Fhoeldin durr.

They emerged in a blind alley of the Waymeet, surrounded by a thin, acrid yellow fog. Riveted iron plate inscribed with red-glowing runes covered the walls and pillars around them. Lurid firelight reflecting from the low-hanging clouds that roofed the Waymeet illuminated the place, striking angry gleams from the scorched glass spars and columns that still survived.

“By Tymora, they’ve ruined the place,” Jorin said. “Malkizid’s devils have made it into some kind of infernal machine.”

“Araevin, what is the purpose of all this? What is Malkizid trying to do here?” Nesterin asked.

“I am not sure,” Araevin breathed.

He frowned at the sharp smell of hot metal in his nostrils and made himself study the evil runes driven into the ancient glass walls. Hellish sorcery pooled and churned slowly through the metal conduits, pinning the ancient elven mythal spells open in the same way that a vivisectioned animal might be opened for inspection. What more could the archdevil want with the device? Didn’t he possess sufficient knowledge of mythalcraft to do what he wanted with the Fhoeldin durr?

Unless… Araevin peered closer, studying the mythal weave before him, and it came to him. The ancient weave of the Fhoeldin durr was spun by the Vyshaanti of Aryvandaar… and they had woven their mythal in such a way that it could not be changed from its purpose except by another scion of House Vyshaan. Malkizid, for all his lore and skill, was not a sun elf of House Vyshaan, and so he could not exert his mastery over the Last Mythal of Aryvandaar without first devising a means of overpowering those ancient restrictions. The iron runes were Malkizid’s own mythal, a mythal the archdevil was building for the purpose of destroying the ancient concordance governing the Fhoeldin durr and replacing it with rules more to his own liking.

“It’s a battering ram to break down the Waymeet’s defenses,” he told Jorin. “Malkizid is building a mythal of his own that will take over the governing of the Waymeet.”

“How much time do we have?” Donnor asked.

“None,” Araevin said grimly. “Malkizid’s spell is complete. I can’t excise his influence with the Gatekeeper’s Crystal.”

“So all this was for nothing?” Maresa shook her head and muttered a savage oath as she turned her back on the rest of the company and kicked at the iron bands on the wall. “What was the point?” she demanded.

Araevin looked again at the corrupted mythal around him. Then he withdrew the Gatekeeper’s Crystal from under his cloak and looked at the three-pointed star. Its substance had taken on a sullen reddish hue, but power still coursed through it. The crystal still draws on the Waymeet for its power, he thought. Maybe… “The crystal no longer commands the Waymeet, but it still channels the power of this place,” he said to Maresa. “We must use the crystal to destroy the Fhoeldin durr.”

“Like the way the Dlardrageths destroyed the wards over the Nameless Dungeon?”

“Yes. I think it’s the only way.”

The genasi gave him a skeptical look. Then she shook her long silver-white hair out of her face with a toss of her head. “I saw what the crystal did to that hillside in the High Forest,” she said. “Is that what you’re going to do here?”

“First we must find the center of the Waymeet,” Araevin said.

Maresa and Nesterin led the way as they set out along a curving corridor that spiraled in toward the middle of the place. The foul smoke hanging in the air of the place burned the eyes and seared the nose, and it limited visibility to a few dozen feet. Araevin quickly realized that the smoke kept them from navigating toward the Waymeet’s center, but at least it also served to help conceal them from any of Malkizid’s servants unless they actually blundered into their enemies.

They came to an intersection, and Araevin studied their surroundings for a moment before pointing to the right. The genasi and the star elf started down the new passageway, stealing forward as quietly as they could.

Harsh voices croaked in the mist behind the company. Araevin whirled just in time to see three mezzoloths emerge from the acidic fog just behind them, following the intersecting avenue. The bulky insectile creatures did not hesitate for an instant; the moment they caught sight of Araevin and his friends, they threw themselves at the travelers, clacking and chattering to each other.

Jorin shot one in the center of its chitin-covered torso, but the monster shrugged off the arrow and kept coming. The ranger stepped back, continuing to shoot as fast as he could bring arrows to the string. Green-feathered shafts peppered the fiends, but then the ranger had to drop his bow with a sharp curse and sweep out his swords, for the mezzoloths were on him. Araevin drew a wand from his belt and looked for a chance to strike back at the monsters, but Donnor threw out an arm.